A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...
Here's part 2 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.
A New Day Dawns
The step from movie to reality has however, time and time again, been proven to be a giant leap. This is especially true when it comes to science fiction. A walking, talking and fighting robot may be a thing of the future, but the essence of Terminator, the Internet sibling called “SkyNet”, may be closer to us than we think.
The building blocks for our modern day Internet were laid back in the sixties by no other than the US Department of Defense. The branch Advance Research Project Agency, ARPA for short, had since the end of WWII been researching and developing methods to quickly get large amounts of information from the general stab distributed to the front lines. The goal was to be able to relay exact and detailed information such as positions, maps and pictures, without having to risk the necks of countless couriers. The Soviets had already launched the Sputnik so the race for positioning oneself as the dominant monitoring eye in the sky was already lost. The war had to been won on the earth. Instead for linking the stars, the ARPA started experimenting with coupling different computers together, and then trying to run calculations on one computer remotely from the other. So the first computer network was born – ARPANET.
But limitations in contemporary technology halted the developers, and ARPANET barely made it of the drawing board. It would be an additional ten years before the ideas of an internet truly surfaced again. This time it was from the realm of the academic world. Lack of funding moved the ARPANET project from military aspects into the top universities of the US, who breathe life into the thoughts once again. The idea remained the same, to quickly and securely send information from one university to another, but the approach had changed. Scientists from MIT, Stanford and UCLA managed, under close supervision from ARPA, design an operating system capable of sharing the collective memory of the connected servers, a so called “Time-sharing” system. The concept borrowed from the thought behind the vacation homes with the same name, where several tenants collectively owns an apartment and thereby reserves the right to said apartment for a limited period of time. In a similar way, the programs were run on the computers, one at a time, sharing the collective strength of all the connected computers. Instead of having the computer run one program at a time, from start to finish, the new operating system allowed for switching in between programs, and by doing so letting several programs simultaneously share the memory´s total capacity. This allowed, for the first time, for a setup of servers capable of coping with the enormous data stream created by a network of computers, without crashing or processing the information for ages. The modern Internet as we know it was born.
... continues in Part III: HAL 9000
Here's part 2 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.
A New Day Dawns
The step from movie to reality has however, time and time again, been proven to be a giant leap. This is especially true when it comes to science fiction. A walking, talking and fighting robot may be a thing of the future, but the essence of Terminator, the Internet sibling called “SkyNet”, may be closer to us than we think.
The building blocks for our modern day Internet were laid back in the sixties by no other than the US Department of Defense. The branch Advance Research Project Agency, ARPA for short, had since the end of WWII been researching and developing methods to quickly get large amounts of information from the general stab distributed to the front lines. The goal was to be able to relay exact and detailed information such as positions, maps and pictures, without having to risk the necks of countless couriers. The Soviets had already launched the Sputnik so the race for positioning oneself as the dominant monitoring eye in the sky was already lost. The war had to been won on the earth. Instead for linking the stars, the ARPA started experimenting with coupling different computers together, and then trying to run calculations on one computer remotely from the other. So the first computer network was born – ARPANET.
But limitations in contemporary technology halted the developers, and ARPANET barely made it of the drawing board. It would be an additional ten years before the ideas of an internet truly surfaced again. This time it was from the realm of the academic world. Lack of funding moved the ARPANET project from military aspects into the top universities of the US, who breathe life into the thoughts once again. The idea remained the same, to quickly and securely send information from one university to another, but the approach had changed. Scientists from MIT, Stanford and UCLA managed, under close supervision from ARPA, design an operating system capable of sharing the collective memory of the connected servers, a so called “Time-sharing” system. The concept borrowed from the thought behind the vacation homes with the same name, where several tenants collectively owns an apartment and thereby reserves the right to said apartment for a limited period of time. In a similar way, the programs were run on the computers, one at a time, sharing the collective strength of all the connected computers. Instead of having the computer run one program at a time, from start to finish, the new operating system allowed for switching in between programs, and by doing so letting several programs simultaneously share the memory´s total capacity. This allowed, for the first time, for a setup of servers capable of coping with the enormous data stream created by a network of computers, without crashing or processing the information for ages. The modern Internet as we know it was born.
Thanks for the history lesson Nisse! It's amazing how we got the Information Superhighway from a military project.
SvaraRaderahehe, yes. if the internet ever runs us over i think that would be a good definition for "irony"... glad you like the post!
SvaraRadera